SCOTLAND
Association of Catholic Priests (Ireland)
Brian Fitzpatrick, a former Labour MSP, offers the thoughts of a Scottish Catholic on upcoming conclave (first published in the Scottish Review on Ash Wednesday).
‘Turn to me and be saved’, says the Lord, ‘For I am God, there is none other, none beside Me, I call your Name’. Hopefully, without being unduly and prematurely maudlin, I can share that those versified simple words of scripture resonate with me. I have asked for them to be included in my requiem mass come the day my family and friends will gather to pray for the passing of my soul and, God willing, perhaps celebrate my life.
Like many 21st-century western Catholics, in falteringly answering that call I have the contradictory sensation that it has never been easier but, at the same time never harder, to cling to the barque of Peter. Certainly, as Scottish Catholics, we now no longer suffer the unjust fates of our forebears. Most of the often still heated anti-Catholic rhetoric flows from an aggressively secularist body of opinion challenging Catholicism as its most robust opponent in the public square rather than the crazier, if equally bitter, sectarian rantings of yesteryear.
Yet my greatest anxieties for the future of the Catholic Church flow more from the antics of some inside our church rather than any enemy without. The church my parents raised me in, and which I doubt I could ever leave, often is an uncomfortable place for a liberal Catholic (not yet an oxymoron). There is an air of shrillness and fundamentalism to much of the monologue emanating from elements of the episcopacy.
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